


Through Blackened Skies on Broken Wings

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 12:58:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19928446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lucifer won. Sammy died.But Dean's not as alone as he'd have himself believe.





	Through Blackened Skies on Broken Wings

This isn't going to be one of those stories that you read about in movies.

The ones where the men are rugged and ripped, wearing dirtied shirts but designer shoes, and the women are all hairless; delicate. The ones where it ends with a kiss and, perhaps if you're lucky, a steamy session of post-apocalyptic sex.

The ones where the good guys win.

Dean Winchester wasn't one of those guys. Maybe he had been, at one point, a hero. Maybe at one point he saved people. But those days had long since passed.

The rugged terrain of planet Earth was enveloped with trees: swinging vines and hardy trunks of wood that stood bold and mocking every which way he turned. The trail had been cut and maintained through years of trudging through the undergrowth, the mud beneath his worn boots hard and cracked. Footprints engrained into the dusty path overlapped each other, legacies lost, and disappeared under the tired step of the eldest Winchester. The only Winchester.

Dean grunted, familiar sweat blazing his back and gracing his forehead as he lugged the bag of supplies up the incline. The camp was situated at the top of the hill, and unfortunately for him, it was a very large, and very steep, climb.

They had sent him to collect supplies. Goddamn supplies. The mockery of the statement almost made his mouth twitch, the way it always used to, however the stiff muscles beside his lips dragged them into a scowl. Charlie had said, and she didn't say much, that every little thing counted in this race for survival.

But 'race' insinuated an end. A victory.

But any chance of that had been brutally crushed under the hand of the Devil many, many moons ago. Any chance of hope had been stabbed through the heart, bleeding out in the sun, and left to die.

Dean Winchester hadn't gone down without a fight. And what a glorious and utterly devastating fight it had been.

He had had to be dragged away from Hope with burning tears and a coarse throat. His guns were blazing, but they were filled with blanks.

"Dean," Benny called, guiding him over to the entrance of the camp as if he hadn't done it a million times before.

"Benny," Dean greeted, bringing the vampire in for a lacklustre hug, and a pat on the back, before letting go rather quickly.

"You got anything new for me brother?" The vampire mused, taking Dean by the shoulders and steering him into the fray. Dean winced slightly behind his painted smile.

"Some toilet paper, a couple o' lighters and... ah!" Dean clicked, looking at Benny with a certain type of suggestion in his eyes that could only be viewed as crude, "'magazines'."

Benny whistled, "the good kind?"

"You know it."

The clap on Dean's back brought him forwards slightly, the rigidity of his spine a habit that he was not inclined to overcome.

"So," Dean mused, turning to Benny with collected melancholia, "fill me in."

The vampire's lip popped out in thought, and Dean sagged slightly when he saw his shoulders brush his ears.

"Nothing much. Jody broke her wrist, again, but she'll be fine. Claire got in a fight - no surprise. And... oh yeah."

Recognising the realisation in his friend's voice, Dean stopped, "Oh yeah? What does that mean?"

Benny rubbed the nape of his neck, his hat skewed on his head and his face freshly sunburnt.

"We found this lass, near dead, wandering by the base of the hill with her kid. The girl didn't make it, but her child's in the infirmary now. Couple 'o scrapes; nothing much."

Dean chewed the inside of his lip, "any idea where they came from?"

"She didn't really have a chance," a voice called, and Dean spun around, arms open, and wrapped them around a smiling Jody Mills.

"Dean," she breathed into his jacket, pulling away and looking at him in that motherly-slash-intimidating way she always did. Dean pushed her shoulder and scoffed.

"Jeez, I was only gone a week."

Jody shrugged, wincing in pain as she jolted her wrist - splinted. Dean pretended not to notice the vulnerability.

"Benny told you about the kid?"

Dean nodded, stance wide and head cocked down towards the ex-sheriff, "what's up with her?"

"Nothing too out of the ordinary, other than the fact that she seemingly survived for... God knows how long on her own with her mother."

Jody looked at him.

"You should go see her. Play the part of caring leader and all that, right?"

Dean sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and shifting his weight between his feet.

"I don't do kids."

xXx

How the hell did he end up here?

The fluttering door - sheet, really - waved mockingly behind Dean as he stepped through into the infirmary. Dirty and unkempt beds lined the walls, and many were taken up. Reddened sheets were piled into one corner, and clothes to be repurposed where in another. Dean could still see some of the blood and dirt on them.

On the cot in the far right was, what he guessed, the little girl. He walked over to her.

"Hi," he coughed, looking down.

She was small, fragile looking, with thick brown hair and green eyes. Her nose was upturned innocently, and her little mouth was pulled into an 'O'. She was dressed in a raggedy dress, the dark green colour of it contrasting the pale sheen to her skin - a sickly blue covering her features. Soft freckles outlined her nose, and rose around her eyes - too knowing for a child of her age. But that wasn't uncommon.

She looked eerily familiar.

"Where's mummy?" The little girl asked, barely a whisper, her voice croaky and broken.

Dean looked around, as if to pass on the task to someone else. But he could hardly ask that of the sick and the dying, could he?

"She died," Dean said bluntly, not caring about fickle emotions. This world was harsh, and that was that. Suck it up or suffer the consequences of naivety.

"Oh," the little girl breathed, her eyes trained on Dean. She didn't cry.

"What's your name?" Dean asked, shaking off her gaze slightly as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Emmeline."

"Okay, Emily - can I call you Emily? Do you know who your parents were?"

She nodded, and Dean let out air he didn't know he had been holding. Those green eyes and freckled face were too similar to his own.

"My mummy is - was," She corrected. No child should have that kind of understanding, "called Grace Williams."

Dean bit his lip, "and your dad?"

Mossy eyes with a hint of blue met his own startling green. Dean knew before she even said it.

"Sam Winchester."


End file.
